two hearts breaking in slow motion
by cristina rosales
Summary: but clove, we're supposed to win this together. / cato&clove, almost star-crossed


**a/n [1]:** this is trashy, pretentious, and all lowercase because why not? for sure, this is less of my personal style but an exploration of another. [also written in a haste]

prompts: violence & monster

cato/clove - almost star-crossed

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they're almost star-crossed. they're almost in love. they're almost monsters. they're almost perfect. they're almost—

/

the cold knife is placed in her hands when she's eight, when the world revolved around stone-quarries and tasting snowflakes from thin air and jumping off trees whose bare arms claw at the sky; when she still believed miracles could happen and her wings weren't torn and broken and the world really was a good place.

it's almost a shame when the knife embeds itself into the apple with a crunch, her eyes glazing over with a glimmer of happiness and her parents smile and shake their heads, _aren't you a little victor?_ she toys the knife and abandons her dreams for a sharp piece of metal; it's almost pitiful but not quite.

[she's not broken yet.]

/

she meets cato when she's ten and he's eleven and the sky's an azure ocean, an endless expanse dotted with placid white clouds sailing through it.

he's blonde and his piercing blue eyes slicing through her soul but his smile melts her heart a little. they scale the smooth stones of the quarry, taunting each other to go higher and faster, and collapse onto stones warmed by the bronze rays of the setting sun. they laugh until their sides ache, at each other and at the games and at the world, the sun smiling down at the two small children.

/

he's just like her, fingers itching to conquer the world and lips curling into a smirk, almost a career.

/

but days flow into months, flow into years and soon their dreams slip through their fingers like water, their souls hardening into stone, and the word _career_ is tattooed onto their foreheads. cynicism is branded onto their hands and blood mars their consciousness; they're no longer children.

she throws the knives until they can chip away paint the size of an ant and her eyes dart around the room, trust drained from their green orbs ages ago, and she smiles as the dummy hits the ground with a _thud_.

he grips swords with skill reaped from many years swinging its heavy blade, and he slices dummies until they clamor to the ground, stuffing spilling like fog, blanketing the ground in thin sheets. his fingers drip blood, staining the ground around him crimson, and he almost regrets satisfaction that ripples through him when his fist slams into the trainer's cheek with an ear-shattering crack.

they're monsters now.

/

the tightrope between sanity and insanity is fine, and they tred it daily.

/

cato tastes like summer nights and sweat-stained tunics and all the lives she could've lived but didn't.

the night swirls around them, a flurry of darkness and moonlight dripping from the sky and stars shaking their burning heads, and clove almost loses herself in molding lips and ranging emotions.

cato cups her face so the stars on leo's pelt shine in her dark iris, and he almost wishes that they were someone else. someone who tools daily in the quarry, chipping away rock until only nitrogen is left, and paints his girl's smile in his dreams or a farmer boy who cuts wheat to the rhythm of his wife's beating heart when they lie between tattered sheets or a tailor who stitches his lover's name onto pink satin and tattoos her eyes on his heart. but they're two [almost] star-crossed tributes trained to spill blood and laugh at death so a gold crown and diamond title can be engraved into their skin [or they'll lie still in a simple casket, shipped home to dry-eyed parents shaking their heads at not being good enough.]

but when they're under the stars with his fingers blazing up her shirt and she drinking him roughly, they can forget about the future in the blurred line of lust and love.

/

insanity eats them from the inside out, a monster clawing at their stomachs, but they have each other. and that is enough.

/

she hates the star-crossed lovers from twelve.

they're pathetic and stupid and going to die, little fire girl and lover boy, oh-so doomed from the start. hell, it's not even _love_ , she can tell. it's part stalking and part hormones and part debt, and those indigents may mix up a compelling, tragic story but it's not _love_.

she's going to kill little fire girl, burn her alive and gorge her eyes out until she's begging to be killed, until her the darling little sister's lullabies are the screams of pain, and then clove can flaunt it in cato's face. _it's the best kill of the game_ , she'll boast, tossing her hair, and cato'll retort, _just wait until i kill you,_ and she'll roll her eyes. it's all in the script.

and, no, she's not jealous; honest. she just almost sort of kind of maybe wishes that cato would stop looking at her as a body to fuck and kiss her goodnight under lone street lamps, and maybe she longs to feel his muscled arms hug her until she can't breathe and they'll grow old together, always laughing at the setting sun. a long dead part of her bubbles up, the part that craves love and affection and all the weak, soft things. she hates that part of her, the weak part, so she clenches her fists until her fingernails bite into her pale palms, drawing dark blood, and she buries the cravings under hate and propaganda and mantras. _i am a career. i will win, and i don't need anyone to help me. i am not weak._

/

 _cato!_

the sky's endless cerulean and no clouds drift in the expanse, it's too pure and too perfect for the rusty scream that pierces the sky.

the boy hears the desperate shriek, ears shattering, and fears jerks him out of the chase for the little fox, his heart woken like he jumped into freezing water.

she's clove, defiant and stubborn and strong, she would never scream his name like it was her last lifesaver, desperation dripping from it. something is definitely wrong, something bad. the world pauses for a second, listening to his thoughts, and the silence suffocates him. it hangs in the forest, no trees rustling, no birds chirping, no noise as the fox slides into the looming trees, nothing.

 _cato!_

his head snaps up at the word and he's up again and running, faster and faster, racing through the trees to her. branches slap his head and brambles pull at his ankles but that doesn't slow him down, he pumps his arms and the trees blur past him as life does to a young child.

 _"clove!"_ the name pours from his lips, desperate syllables and harsh vowels, and his lungs burn with adrenaline and fear, fire and ice, coursing through his body. the hairs on his neck stands when he enters the clearing.

the cornucopia gleams in the sunlight, metal and strong, but beneath the towering beast is a slight frame, dark hair spilling onto the grass, melding with the dark earth. eleven boy slinks away into the wheat, bronze stalks embracing him until he fades away, a shadow melting into sunlight.

he falters.

her eyes widen at him racing across the fields, and he drowns in the hope flooding her eyes. he drowns in jade orbs, lost in the rivers of veins and coal-black pupils as he sprints toward her, steps short with desperation and heavy with reality.

"clove!" his hand clasps hers, the warmth fading from her pale fingers, and he squeezes it tighter, trying to grasp her spirit forever. his knees can't support the reality crushing his shoulders, and he falls to the damp grass, legs tethered to the ground by a thousand hopes. she weakly smiles, nothing like the pearl teeth and icy lips she flashed before, this one is tired gums and snow teeth, melting in the approaching summer, and a crystal tear slips out onto his cheek. it spills down his cheek, carving gorges into the flesh and film of dust.

"i love you," the whisper trails into the twisting breeze. she peeks at him through dark lashes, smiles, and slips down into the empty darkness, for cato's blue eyes and warm hand cannot tether her to the earth just as iron chains cannot. and in two seconds, just like that, she's dead.

/

 _but clove, we're supposed to win this together._

/

when the warmth drained from her fingertips and he kissed her tired lips once last time and pain that tasted like bitter salt and rotten candy was injected into his veins and his tears running down his fingers outnumbered the pints of blood stained onto the calloused hands, he slips. he spirals down, down, down the pit of insanity, rushing toward the bottom on the waterfall of time; somewhere along the fall, a piece of the pass embeds itself into his side and he breaks.

they wanted a career, a blood-spilling, sword-wielding, angry, monster? they'll have one.

/

in his dreams, she's there next to him, silver for veins and gleaming jade for eyes, and he kisses her and she kisses back and the capitol is only a memory of clawing hands and sparkling lights; they're lovers with a happily-ever-after. but he wakes and the dreams scamper away, evading his reaching hands; clove's dead and he's alive and they're monsters with no happily-ever-ever, just an ending.

nothing can change that.

/

it's almost heart-breaking that clove's green eyes pierce into his soul as her claws tear his flesh like paper, but his heart's already broken.

/

in their story, almost is never enough.

/

 **fin.**

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a/n [2]: let me know what you thought of that! i'd love to know :)


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